Hope in Christ

I'm continuing to plod my way through an excellent book, How People Change, by Lane & Tripp. I say "plod" because I haven't had much time to read lately. Many are the distractions these days...but all good.

In the opening chapter, the authors talk about five gospel perspectives that drive the book. They are:

1. The Extent and Gravity of Our Sin
2. The Centrality of the Heart
3. The Present Benefits of Christ
4. God's Call to Growth and Change
5. A Lifestyle of Repentance and Faith

These five perspectives pretty well encapsulate the gospel life. Let me share with you what they write about the third perspective, The Present Benefits of Christ.

The Christian hope is more than a redemptive system with practical principles that can change your life. The hope of every Christian is a person, the Redeemer, Jesus Christ. He is the wisdom behind every biblical principle and the power we need to live them out. Because Christ lives inside us today, because he rules all things for our sakes (see Eph. 2:22-23), and because he is presently putting all his enemies under his feet (see 1 Cor. 15:25-28), we can live with courage and hope.
Our hope is not in our theological knowledge or our experience within the body of Christ. We are thankful for these things, yet we hold on to one hope: Christ. In him we find everything we need to live a godly life in the here and now. Paul captures it so well: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal. 2:20).

A friend of mine went to hear Shane Claiborne speak a couple of years ago, back in the previous electoral cycle. The other speakers (all Christians) were trashing George W. Bush up and down, assuming, I suppose, that Claiborne felt the same way they did about Bush (hate) and Obama (love). When Claiborne took the podium he said this: "Last night, on David Letterman, Barack Obama said, 'America is the hope of the world.' I thought Jesus was the hope of the world." Stunned silence.

We put our hope in a lot of things that are not God and a lot of people that are not Jesus. I know too many single women who put their hope in finding some man to marry. I know too many men who put their hope in success. And I know too many people who live shattered, cynical lives because they placed their hope in things that are not God and people that are not Jesus.

Jesus is your hope. He is my hope. He is the only one who, when all is said and done, will come through for us. He is the only one who can rescue us from the evil that lies within our hearts. He is the only one who can change us by transforming our hearts, by changing that which we desire.

Don't be allured away from Jesus by shining, beautiful things. Don't trust in the strength of things determined by the values of the market. Don't put your hope in yourself. Jesus rules over everything for your sake, and he his conquering all of his enemies, and he lives in your heart by faith. He is your hope.

Hope in Babylon

I recently finished Eugene Peterson's wonderful book, Run with the Horses. I started reading it several months ago and got sidetracked, as often happens in the busy seasons of life. I'll post a full review of the book tomorrow, but today I'd like to share some thoughts from the book that are relevant to what I posted on Monday, Born for Babylon.

Chapter 12 deals with Jeremiah 29, in which the prophet delivers a message to his fellow Hebrews who have been taken into exile in Babylon. His message is this: "Get used to life there. Settle down. Get married. Plant a garden. Pray for Babylon, because you're going to be there for 70 years." Not exactly what you want to hear if you're the displaced Israelites. Peterson describes exile this way:

The essential meaning of exile is that we are where we don't want to be. We are separated from home. We are not permitted to reside in the place where we comprehend and appreciate our surroundings. We are forced to be away from that which is most congenial to us.

Exile is where life doesn't make sense. The familiar rhythms have been drowned in the thunderclaps of that which is foreign.

Jeremiah taught the Israelites to embrace the foreign and unfamiliar. There were other prophets, however, who were preaching a message of false hope. They said the horror would be over in less than 2 years. A far cry from the 70 predicted by Jeremiah.

These three [false] prophets made a good living fomenting discontent and merchandising nostalgia. But their messages and dreams, besides being false, were destructive. False dreams interfere with honest living. As long as the people thought that they might be going home at any time, it made no sense to engage in committed, faithful work in Babylon. If there was a good chance that they would soon get back all they had lost, there was no need to develop a life of richness, texture and depth where they were. ...The people, glad for a religious reason to be lazy, lived hand to mouth, parasites on society, irresponsible in their relationships, indifferent to the reality of their actual lives.

You may not like where you're at, but that's the only place you are, and it's the only place you can live for Jesus. Exile, in all its forms, sucks. No doubt about it. But you have to come to terms with the reality that this may be where you're always going to be.

The only place you have to be human is where you are right now. The only opportunity you will ever have to live by faith is in the circumstances you are provided this very day: this house you live in, this family you find yourself in, this job you have been given, the weather conditions that prevail at this moment. ...The aim of the person of faith is not to be as comfortable as possible but to live as deeply and thoroughly as possible--to deal with the reality of life, discover truth, create beauty, act out love.

Peterson goes on to write that exile forces us to make a decision between feeling sorry for ourselves or making the best of our circumstances.

We can say: "I don't like it; I want to be where I was ten years ago. How can you expect me to throw myself into what I don't like--that would be sheer hypocrisy. What sense is there in taking risks and tiring myself out among people I don't even like in a place where I have no future?"

Eugene Peterson, get out of my head! I'm guilty of saying these exact words, and for years! But, he says, we have a choice. And that is only the first path we could choose. The second is far better.

Or we can say: "I will do my best with what is here. Far more important than the climate of this place, the economics of this place, the neighbors in this place, is the God of this place. God is here with me. What I am experiencing right now is on ground that was created by him and with people whom he loves. It is just as possible to live out the will of God here as any place else. I am full of fear. I don't know my way around. I have much to learn. I'm not sure I can make it. But I had feelings like that back in Jerusalem. Change is hard. Developing intimacy among strangers is always a risk. Building relationships in unfamiliar and hostile surroundings is difficult. But if that is what it means to be alive and human, I will do it."

I wish I had been living like this for the past several years, rather than wallowing in self-pity and flying the flag of entitlement. This is how we live with hope in Babylon.

Peterson concludes the chapter with these wise words:

Exile is the worst that reveals the best. ...Exile reveals what really matters and frees us to pursue what really matters, which is to seek the Lord with all our hearts.

I know you don't feel it, but God is in your exile. He is with you, but the only way to find him there is to quit trying to get back to Jerusalem. Stop longing for the good old days, and live with hope in this foreign land. There is hope in Babylon because God is with you there.

Your Hope

Last night, after everyone from life group had left, Breena and I sat down to pray. Sometimes, before I can pray, I need to read some Scripture because I don't really have the words, and praying God's word back to him helps me to find those words. So I opened to Isaiah 40, and started in verse 21:

Do you not know?

     Have you not heard?

...Those who hope in YHWH

     will renew their strength

They will soar on wings like eagles;

     they will run and not grow weary,

     they will walk and not be faint.

It was that bit about hope that struck me most. It occurred to me that I had been hoping in the false idols that Tim Keller had written about in his book Counterfeit Gods, as well as in some idols that are particular to me. I spend a lot of time thinking about the future, hoping for a better life for me and my family. I create films in my imagination of the life I really want.

It occurred to me, as I sat and prayed with my wife, that my hope is not in YHWH. My hope is in making enough money to provide a good life for us. My hope is in finding a ministry job that truly satisfies me. My hope is in having a more structured, organized life so that I can do all the things I want to do. All of these are good things--things that, I believe, God wants for me--but they cannot be the object of my hope. That must be God, and God alone. These things had become idols in my heart because I directed my hope toward them and not toward God.

Our prayer last night was a prayer of repentance, of unmasking our idols and removing them from the throne of our hearts. The challenge is to continue in this new way of hoping, of rewriting the films of my imagination. I'll know that my hope is truly in God alone when I have stopped daydreaming about a better life and financial blessing, and started to imagine a future in which God is most fully glorified through my life.